Friday Staff Survey: Put On Your Red Shoes And...

This survey was compiled by TNG co-founder Zack.

Original illustration by Maggie.

I have a slight fascination with finding the logical bases for gay stereotypes. Gays are fabulous? Gays are used to putting up peacock feathers to find each other in an otherwise monotone world. Gays are bad at sports? Gays aren't allowed to play sports without a whole lot of ridicule and harassment. But its taken me longer to find a reason for one of the age-old, time-tested stereotypes about all genders of homos: The one that says we really like to dance. The best that I could come up with is that most of us were forced to take opposite-sex dates to middle and high school dances so we're trying to make up for lost time now.

So for that reason, and in honor of this Saturday's Homo/Sonic, the Friday Staff Survey question is below:

How did you handle school dances? Did you brave taking a same sex date or did you go with someone of the opposite gender and pretend you liked them?

You can read all our answers below the fold and leave your own in the comment box.

1. Zack, Co-founder and primary contributor:

I had a spectacular run of bad luck with my female dance dates in high school. My freshman homecoming date picked that particular night to drop acid for the first time and ran screaming from the cafeteria in the middle of Will Smith's "Miami." Later she gave one of my best friends a BJ. Sophomore date got grounded the night before a big dance because her dad found her passed out in her bathroom after a big night out. The same year, I went to prom with a girl who had a thicker mustache than me. Junior year my prom date told me a week before the big day that she was actually dating my mortal enemy, but still insisted we go to the dance together. Senior year, though, I actually had a boyfriend. We were too chicken shit to go to prom together (and our dates happened to hate each other) and I actually don't think I saw much of him the whole night. Still, though, it made a lot of my former bad experiences a little better to know that I had someone waiting in the wings for me.

2. Michael, Co-founder and primary contributor:

I would go to dances with male friends and watch them have fun while I stood pinned against a wall by a mixture of boredom and abject fear.

3. Allison, Staff Contributor:

I was a big whore at school dances, but only with guys. I'm such a traitor!

4. Matt, Staff Contributor:

I only went to the major dances. I had a best friend back then and we were inseparable. He was shy around girls, so he didn't like asking them out. At homecoming dances we usually just went singly and just hung around together for mutual support. If some girl wanted to dance, I would oblige. I'm not sure if he ever did. He's not gay, and I never harbored any attraction to him, but it did make dances easier to have someone around who was as bad at girls as I was. For our junior and senior proms, we went both years with female friends.

5. Philip, Staff Historian:

This doesn't really answer the question, but it's my best "school dance" story, so I'm sharing it. I'd been out for years by the time I was a junior in college, but I can "pass" well enough that a not-out lesbian friend asked if I would accompany her as her date to a service-sorority function. She figured I wouldn't know anyone there, they wouldn't know I was gay, it would look like she was straight, and she wouldn't have to put out at the end of the evening. In order to be helpful, I agreed, and all went as planned... until the dancing portion of the evening. After we'd been out on the floor for a bit, my "date" went to the ladies' room where one of her sorority sisters asked her breathlessly, "You know that your date is gay, right? I mean, no straight guy can dance like that!"

6. Rocky, Music Editor:

Well, as most of you know, I am not a wallflower so school dances weren't that hard. Actually, they were kind of fun in a cheesy sort of way. I did a lot of theatre and dance and music in high school so I was the "drama queer" to begin with. A school dance was actually one of the few occasions my friends and I could roll up dressed like a boy band and school all of the jocks without getting any shit. I did have a girlfriend for a while and she was cool, b/c we'd dance and chill and I rarely troubled her. (Of course, I broke up with her right before senior prom. Not cool.) And sometimes I would go with some girl I was trying to "date," but really I was just trying to hang out with my friends and dance my ass off. Besides, I went to prep school, so at any given dance everyone was too wasted to really care what anyone else was doing. In retrospect I suppose I could have taken advantage of that, but alas...

I just read that caffeinated and realized that it sounds like the diary of an extra in "She's All That." No, no. High school was demoralizing, acne-ridden and miserable as per usual. Not to worry...

7. Maggie, Staff Cartoonist:

The first school dance I braved was also in 6th grade. Beforehand my mother took me to the Gap and let me pick out an outfit. I vividly remember climbing out of our navy blue minivan and walking into the gym wearing a white button down, a blue striped sweater vest, khaki pants (I believe they even had front pleats. oh god.), and brown lace-up loafers. I thought I looked hot. It wasn't until a number of years later and other school dances with athlete boyfriends in tow that I realized all signs pointed to G.A.Y.

8. Corey, Managing Editor and Staff Contributor:

As you will still find me now, I was the loser who couldn't dance, sang along with the songs, and either stood on the wall or stood hopeless and still on the dance floor. The only differences between then and now were that (a) I did sometimes have female dates back then and (b) there'd be some slow songs to dance to. Can we get some "Iris" next Homo/Sonic?

9. Chris, Theatre Guru:

My first school dance was in 6th grade and I don't think I slept at all the night before. In order to get kids out on the dance floor the teachers thought they'd do it "snowball" style, where one pair starts, then each chooses another partner, they choose one more, and on until every one is having a blast. Right? It basically turned into a "picking teams for PE" moment set to Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love." As it turns out, I was more popular than I thought, got picked and then panicked because I hadn't anticipated having to pick someone else. Being the gentleman I try to be, I picked one of the girls who I knew would be picked near to last. I never heard the end of it from my friends. Not cool. Things were better in junior high when I was in student council and just got to handle decorations and snack bar. I could dance if I liked the song or make up an excuse about running out of Tang if I didn't. In high school I went to two proms and one winter formal with one of my best friends (female) on the planet. We did everything a proper prom date would do, except I didn't put out. Her friends later used that as justification for why I was gay, saying that any straight man in his right mind would try to get some tail at senior prom. Still, we had a blast. And there's nothing like being at an IHOP in a tux.

10. Ed, Staff Contributor:

I had a group of friends and we were branded the "The Preppy Boy's Club" by our girlfriends. They referred to themselves as the "VPBC" —Victims of the Preppy Boy's Club — in part because the guys would either invite them or get them to invite us to dances and social events. Then, all the guys would bail on them. We would hang out together and get drunk. One year, before she would invite me to Christmas dance, the girl I was dating made me sign a contract promising not to disappear with my friends. My junior year in high school, I was class president and got to go to the senior prom. I invited my "best friend." That was the night I told him I loved him. My senior year, I pissed off the girl I had been kind of dating when I invited my "super girlfriend" (I don't like "fag hag.") to prom. We doubled with my female best friend and one of my clubbing buddies. Later we drove into Houston and did the after hours thing at a club called Therapy. I'll probably burn in hell for this one, but I went to a non-school sanctioned event with the same girl I was dating. I "disappeared" again, but this time I was making out with a guy in the bathroom. He said he wanted me to go home with him, so I got my date's younger brother so drunk I had to take them home. Then I did a quick U-turn and hooked up with bathroom-guy back at his house.

Editorial Staff:

11. Jolly, Events Editor:

I only went to the "big" dances in high school (two proms and a semi-formal) and always went with girls, because at the time that's what I thought I wanted so it was never a question. College was more interesting — most of the out gay guys in my fraternity (including me) usually took female dates to our formals unless we were in a serious relationship with another guy. The general philosophy was that you could dance and have fun and act ridiculous with someone and not have to worry about impressing/entertaining a potential hook-up/boyfriend.

12. Andrew, Editorial Assistant:

I was "straight" in high school and thus was obligated to take the young woman I was a) courting or b) dating. Quite the ruse, you see. In fact, my mother still has the cheesy photo up on the mantle from my prom. Every time my fiance and I are home, I implore her to take them down but she says she thinks they are pretty and wants to leave them up.